


Cross Your Heart

by eko (togina)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 1980s, Angst, Gen, Pre-Series, early 1990s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 09:11:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8199566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/eko
Summary: John spent the first year wishing that Dean would start talking. He spent the next few years wishing that Sammy would stop - just for a little while, just about the things other people didn't need to know.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I have a series of questions in my head that I've turned into prompts (that may have canon answers, but if so, I don't know them, probably due to my extreme ignorance regarding the show after season 2). This is one possible answer to, "Why does John bother to keep hunting a secret from Sam, when he tells Dean?"
> 
> Mild reference to John's journal (staying with his friend and co-owner of their auto shop in Lawrence after the fire, cameo in ep. 1:9 I think?), and the Christmas flashbacks where Sam learns about the family business in ep. 3:8. This story assumes that you forget a lot of things that you learn your first few years of life, and mostly recall in clear but brief flashbacks or memories reinforced by other people telling you about them. Also, I have misrepresented Child Protective Services, here, but have hopefully not misrepresented the good they aim to do for children and families.

It wasn’t because Sammy was too young. Not at first. John looked at both boys and all he could see was his wife, her face red and blonde hair dark with sweat, smiling soft as anything at the squalling, squinting little bundle in her arms. Sammy had been bigger by nearly two pounds — two weeks early, too, couldn’t wait to see the world, where Dean had been twenty long days overdue — but each of them had fit in the crook of John’s arm, feet tucked against his elbow, little pink hands wrapped around his thumb.

Mary’s babies. They were too young for all of it, for the world to be the miserable bitch that John had never believed she could be, even slogging through the jungle in Nam. He’d thought he’d seen the worst of it there, wide dark eyes and thin faces on the orphans crowded into the military villages, corralled behind the fence. But the worst of it didn’t come ‘til years later, wide green eyes in a pale face, a little boy curled into his brother’s nursery blanket, everything they owned saturated with the smell of burnt plastic and layered with ash.

 

He’d told Dean as they drove out of Lawrence that December, creeping out of his friends’ house in the middle of the night like deserters, John cradling a boy in each arm to keep from waking Kate. Mike’s wife had wanted kids for years with no success, and John had seen the way she coddled Sam, the toys she bought for Dean. He’d held on a little tighter, as they ducked out the door. They were _his_ sons, _Mary’s_ sons, and John would be damned before anyone tried to take her place.

“I’m going to find what killed your mother,” he’d promised, glancing in the rearview mirror to see green eyes and mussed hair peeking out over the nest of blankets and pillows surrounding the boys. Dean had blinked hard — clearing the sand from his eyes, Mary would have said — and dipped his chin to rest on Sammy’s bald head. “It’s something bad, Deano. Something real bad. I don’t know what yet, but I’m gonna find out.” Dean’s eyes were bright in the dark, looking silently at John. John swallowed. “I’m gonna find out,” he swore, the same oath he’d left at Mary’s grave. “And I’m going to make it pay.”

Dean hadn’t said a word. John still wasn’t sure if Dean had heard him, that first time; the only person the boy spoke to for a long time was his little brother, nursery rhymes and lullabies and nonsense words he’d learned on Mary’s lap.

Even if he hadn’t, he’d certainly heard enough between that December and the next, when John hunted his first ghost. He hadn’t let either boy out of his sight that year, had met with acquaintances of old friends at playgrounds, had pushed Dean on the swing while a series of dangerous-looking men gave up a little of what they knew. Even if he’d only understood half of it, Dean must have gotten a pretty good idea how the world really worked, same as John.

Same as Sammy.

Of course, Dean never spoke to anyone, hunched his scrawny shoulders and stared at his placemat when the waitress tried to take his order, squeezed his little brother so hard that Sammy squealed when the librarian invited them away from their dad’s research and over to story time.

Sammy, though; Sammy talked to _everyone_. The cashier at the grocery store. The other babies on the playground. The waitress. The bus boy. The grizzled clerk who sold John ammo at half price. Sammy talked to the sun and the clouds, the grass and the dogs and the dirt in the creases of his grubby palms. The only peace came when the boy finally fell asleep, and even then, he whistled air through his small nose and out his mouth.

It didn’t matter much, in the beginning. No one could understand a nonsensical word the boy said, spit bubbles and gibberish and baby teeth peeking through when he grinned and yammered on about things that only Dean pretended to understand. Sammy talked and everyone smiled and chucked him under the chin and exclaimed over how adorable he was before transferring their attention to the brother saying words that they could understand.

And that was something, right there. Sammy’s happy babble seemed to bring out the sly big brother in Dean, because John’s oldest son had taken to “translating” his little brother’s demands. “Sammy likes books with funny words,” he said, an imperious six-year-old in the children’s section of the library, and they went back to the motel loaded down with Dr. Seuss. “Sammy wants chocolate ice cream,” he would say, when they walked past the stand.

John rolled his eyes. “Sure, _Sammy_ does,” he drawled, but if speaking for Sammy got Dean talking, he couldn’t complain.

Then Sammy turned two, and finally started making sense.

“Play!” he cried, dragging his older brother toward the playscape swarming with kids. “Play ghos’!”

“My dad,” he explained seriously to his first teacher, already chattering away to the woman he had just met, while Dean held on to Sammy’s hand and refused to leave for first grade. “Shoots mon’ters. Bad fings.”

Dean stiffened. John pinched the bridge of his nose.

“What an imagination!” the teacher declared, winking at John before crouching down to give Sammy a bright smile. “I bet your dad fights all sorts of monsters, huh? Keeps them out of the closet, and checks under your bed?”

Sammy scowled, long familiar with the cheery voices grown-ups used when they ignored his nonsense and patted him on the head.

“No,” he snapped at the woman, even though John checked inside the closets and under the beds of every new place that they slept. Monsters could be anywhere, after all. “Wan’ go now,” he told Dean, who looked like he agreed.

Sammy didn’t start screaming until John dragged Dean away from the coloring table toward his own class, blubbering an incomprehensible tirade at John for leaving him, intermixed with pleas for his brother to return. “Wh’if a mon’ter comes?” Sammy wailed, pounding tiny fists into his teacher’s shirt and struggling to get into the hall.

John hadn’t looked back — boy had to grow up sometime, needed to learn how to get by for a few hours on his own — but he’d had to scoop Dean up and carry him to prevent him from tearing back down the hall.

He’d set his son down at the door to first grade, prepared to deal with a second set of tears. Dean hadn’t even glanced at him, still staring down the hall, his hands clenched hard in the collar of John’s shirt. “What if a monster _does_ come, Dad?” he whispered, quiet about the world they knew since a friendly librarian had laughed and told him monsters didn’t exist. “What if there’s a fire, like before?”

“Hey.” John put his hands on Dean’s shoulders, shook him a little until he finally looked his dad in the eye. “Hey. I’m not gonna let anything near you boys. You know that.”

He kissed his oldest son on the forehead, pulled up a smile to prove that everything would be okay, and pushed him through the door.

And if the boys’ teachers saw him lingering in the halls, or peering into the cafeteria windows, watching the playground from his car; well, lots of parents had trouble letting go.

 

Sammy kept talking about monsters. Kept playing ghost. Made a friend at one school who had a fancy set of crayons, and colored his older brother a silver knife for the “wolfs.” Teachers put it down to an overactive imagination and an older brother telling scary stories, and John figured it wasn’t doing any harm.

Then there was Ms. Harding in Pierce, Idaho. There was something mauling people in the forest nearby, and John had thought the town looked as good a place as any to park the boys for the last month of school, have Dean finish up second grade while Sam sang the alphabet or made stone soup or whatever it was they did in preschool besides nap.

He’d been focused on finding the monster in the woods. He’d scouted the school, sure, but hadn’t found anything in the art closet or under the desks that might come for his boys.

He should have looked harder. He should have known there was more to Ms. Harding than a soft, pink t-shirt that highlighted the curve of her breasts and a smile that never failed to make Sammy frown.

He should have known she’d come after his sons.

“I don’t like Sammy’s teacher,” Dean told him one night over Chef Boyardee and canned green beans. John hummed from behind the old newspaper he was perusing for clues. “She stares at me when I go pick him up. Yesterday she asked me what we’re doing here, where you work.”

“Why are we here?” Sammy piped up, light eyes and messy brown hair catching John’s eye from behind his dinner bowl. “It’s cold here.”

“It’s just for a little while,” John soothed, reaching over to ruffle Sammy’s soft hair. “And you know why. Dad’s got to kill a monster, and then we can go.”

“’Kay.” Sammy shrugged, satisfied, and tipped his bowl to scrape out the last of the ravioli. “Can we read more ‘bout Lans’lot?” he asked Dean, chewing through his words.

“If you wash the dishes, sure,” Dean agreed, shoveling down his own dinner and standing up to drag a chair over to the sink for Sammy to stand on.

He hadn’t brought it up again, and John had forgotten all about Ms. Harding a few minutes later, his newspaper a temporary casualty of the boys’ soap and water fight.

 

“Mr. Winchester,” Sammy’s teacher said, two weeks later, when he showed up a few minutes late to pick up his youngest son. “Could I have a word with you?”

John had spent all night hunting in the forest, finally taking down something he still couldn’t name just as dawn tinted the sky, staggering home just in time to see his boys onto the bus and promise to pick them up from school. He was not in the mood to talk about Sammy’s achievements with scissors and glue. God knew he’d hear about them anyway on the ride home.

“This isn’t a good time,” he grunted, squatting down and giving a sharp whistle. “Sammy! Let’s go!”

“Daddy!” Sammy leaped out of the chair he’d been sitting in, toppled it in his rush and then glanced over his shoulder at the adult behind him, his little shoulders hunched in the long-sleeved shirt that had been Dean’s. He didn’t move to pick up the chair. He didn’t move toward John. “They said I had to stay here,” he whispered, a whine edging into his voice, his hands jammed into the small pockets of his jeans, rocking onto his toes. “They said lots of things, Daddy, ‘bout me an’ De an’ what we eat for dinner, an’ where you go, an’ if we have –”

“I think that’s enough, Sammy,” Ms. Harding said mildly, and John agreed. It was more than enough.

Sammy frowned. “I don’ like you,” he declared, glowering up at the teacher, three feet tall and every inch a Winchester man. “Nei’ver does De.”

John stood up, drew himself to his full height, made certain that his shoulders filled the door. “What’s going on here?” he thundered, gratified when Ms. Harding had to tilt her head to meet his gaze.

She didn’t step back, though. Didn’t blink. “Are you planning to use those fists, Mr. Winchester?” she wondered, in the same tone she’d shushed Sammy with moments before. “Your son seems to think you’re a violent man, shooting all those monsters that you do. He’s drawn pictures of all your different knives.”

“My son,” John replied slowly, stressing each word. “Has a vibrant imagination, and an older brother who likes to tell ghost stories.”

“Mmm,” the teacher hummed, and it could have been agreement or polite disbelief. “This older brother is the one who brings Samuel to school, yes? Who spent last night with him while you were out ‘hunting monsters,’ I believe your son said?”

Sammy had wrapped his arms around himself and tucked his head down, chin to his chest. He was silent for the first time in years, had clearly realized that this was something he didn’t want, found out what happened when a grown-up finally listened to all the words he said. He stayed standing, though, and despite everything John almost smiled.

“Look lady,” John growled, his patience rapidly eroding. “I’m not sure what the he– heck you expect me to say about Sammy’s tale telling, but I’ve got another son waiting for me to pick him up and errands to run, so . . .”

“Before I moved back to Pierce, I worked in Boise.” Ms. Harding finally backed into the classroom, stepping sideways to reveal another adult sitting uncomfortably at the children’s table Sammy had vacated, a severe woman with a suit jacket and graying hair. “As a social worker.” John’s stomach churned, and he fought the clench in his gut and the urge to grab Sammy and run. “I’ve asked Mrs. Jones if she could come in today, so that the state can learn more about your family’s situation and offer some help.”

Ms. Harding stretched out a delicate hand, as though she meant to rest it encouragingly on John’s arm. She glanced up at his face and dropped the hand back down to her side.

“I’ll go and fetch Dean from class, then, while you talk to Mrs. Jones.”

 

“I’m not going to hold your hand,” echoed down the hall, a child’s high voice distracting John from Mrs. Jones’s polite invasion into their lives. “Don’t touch me! I know where we’re going. Where’s Sammy? Where’s Dad?”

“De!” His brother’s voice was all it took to bring Sammy’s head up, and the boy took off from where he’d huddled into John’s side, racing out of the classroom and into the corridor.

“Sammy!”

Moments later, John’s sons came through the door, both of them safe and whole, and John could feel the tension in his spine ratchet down a notch at the sight. Ms. Harding came in behind them, carrying the backpack that Dean had obviously dropped in favor of catching Sammy.

John had tried to discourage Dean from carrying Sammy; at first to keep from spoiling the kid, then out of fear that Sammy would never learn to walk and Dean would end up with a hernia they couldn’t afford. His lectures hadn’t done a damned thing, except prompt Sammy to ask what a hernia was, and right then John was glad for it, his sons so close together that he could snatch them up easy and make for the door.

Sammy clung to Dean, his knees digging into Dean’s waist, ankles crossed behind Dean’s back, arms around his brother’s neck and mouth pressed to his ear, whispering secrets no one else could ever hope to hear. Dean didn’t even need to hold him up, anymore, just used one hand to haul Sammy’s butt a little higher and the other to rub lines up and down his little brother’s back, nodding when Sammy paused for breath.

“Are they always like that?” Mrs. Jones inquired softly, sounding exactly as kind and nonjudgmental as she had when she asked John if he ever hit his sons.

“Their mother died,” John gritted out, folding his arms across his chest to resist the urge to throttle her and her gentle voice. “They’re close.”

“Have you noticed Dean acting as a parent to Samuel? Perhaps doing things for him that your wife used to do?”

Dean singing “Hey, Jude,” in the backseat to quiet his brother down, his first words since the fire. Dean teaching Sammy “The Itsy, Bitsy Spider” and “Patty Cake,” the way Mary had taught him. Dean holding Sammy’s hand when they crossed the street, Dean rolling his eyes but pouring another glass of grape juice when Sammy said please, Dean looking away when Sammy asked why there were spots on Dean’s face but not his. _They’re angel kisses_ , Mary had told Dean, when he asked how come he had spots on his nose, and then she’d bent to kiss every freckle until they’d both collapsed, giggling, onto the ground.

“Dad.” Dean’s voice broke through John’s reverie. John met his oldest son’s gaze; Dean’s green eyes were wary, and he’d shifted to the side so that he could see both women without moving, his freckles dark against his pale face. “Sa– I’m hungry,” he corrected quickly, proof he’d overheard Mrs. Jones. “Can we go home?” He didn’t glance away from his father, but John could see in the boy’s shoulders that he was watching the other adults from the corners of his eyes.

“He’s a growing boy,” John announced, with a helpless shrug that had won over a widow on the investigation the week before. “I don’t suppose we could continue this at the house –” And thank god houses were dirt cheap to rent in Pierce, John couldn’t imagine what this would be if Sammy had babbled to them about sleeping in a motel. “– where you could go through my cupboards and see my perfectly normal collection of kitchen knives.”

Mrs. Jones and Ms. Harding exchanged a long look. John held his breath. Dean pulled his little brother hard against his chest. John caught a glimpse of Sammy’s clever gaze peeking out from where he had his face tucked between his own arm and Dean’s neck. Then Mrs. Jones started gathering her papers, and they all exhaled.

“We would like to do a home visit,” she admitted, no doubt wanting to see what sort of household John ran, with a son who drew knives and talked at length about his daddy fighting ghosts. “I think we could finish this then.”

“We’re not trying to break up your family, Mr. Winchester,” Ms. Harding said, when John approached her to take his sons’ bags. “We just want to help you do what’s best for your children. We all want the same thing.”

“I can see that,” John answered, stepping away from the woman and reaching out to curl a hand over Dean’s shoulder, squeezing hard. “We’ll meet you ladies at home.”

The only things at the house were food and clothes, a bag of salt. Nothing that couldn’t be left behind. By morning they were in California, and by the next fall they were in Maryland, Dean and Sam Campbell registered for third grade and the last year of pre-K.

 

John stopped talking about cases, after that. Swore Dean to secrecy, and warned Sammy not to talk to strangers, or to women in suits. Both of them crossed their hearts and spat, the solemn oath of little boys who were still clinging to each other and their father after three days on the road.

“Don’t be stupid,” Dean hissed, a few weeks later at a diner in New Mexico, when Sammy had finally started his engine up again and was chattering to the waitress about the monsters his dad was there to kill. “That stuff’s not real.” Sam sniffled, scooting away from Dean like his brother had thrown salt in his eyes. Dean stuck out his jaw. “Dad’s just a . . .”

John watched Dean’s frown deepen, as the boy sifted through the jobs that he knew. Waitress. Librarian. Teacher. Line cook. Hunter. “Salesman,” he offered, smiling at the waitress and extending his cup for the extra coffee he was definitely going to need. “Ma’am.”

“Yeah,” Dean nodded, because Sammy was still staring at him, his lower lip wobbling dangerously. “A salesman. Like on TV.”

“What’s a salesman?” Sammy asked, inching back toward his brother. “Why isn’t Dad on TV?” Dean cast a pleading glance at John, who gazed into the iridescent sheen on his coffee and groaned.

By first grade, the only monsters Sammy seemed to remember were the ordinary, imaginary ones under his bed.

By second grade, he only spouted off to teachers about his school work, about how Dean had already taught him fractions, about the chapter books they read at home. He’d learned to shut his mouth about everything else, finally, after coming home one afternoon and saying that Mrs. O’Connor asked too many questions, just like Ms. Harding had. John hadn’t realized that Sammy remembered her, since he’d long forgotten about the monsters that John could kill.

“You know,” Sammy said, slinging his backpack off his shoulder and tossing it onto the unmade bed. “In that classroom with the yellow walls. Back when I told those stupid stories,” he added, and then slammed outside with his soccer ball before his father could respond.

In third grade, Sammy learned that the stories hadn’t been stupid. Hadn’t been wrong. But by third grade, Sammy didn’t really talk to anyone at all.


End file.
